“Why did God choose me to be a Seer?”

“Without some kind of evidence that you really have been contacted by God, it’s not much use discussing His motives with someone who doesn’t think He exists.”

Question, verbatim, from Peter:
Why did god save my life when evil attack me and give me knowledge of his existence and his power over evil.And told me I was to be a Seer and give me strength and showed me the strength of love and how to used it as a shield for other poeple to stand behind for strength.I was a atheist a sinner.

Answer:
The real question isn’t why God chose you, it’s whether God chose you. Only if this were establshed would the why be of any use.

In short, how do you know? How would you demonstrate to someone else that you had been chosen by God? For example, as a “Seer” are there things you know that others don’t, and could you prove yourself to be in possession of information you couldn’t have gotten any other way?

Without some kind of evidence that you really have been contacted by God, it’s not much use discussing His motives with someone who doesn’t think He exists.

7 thoughts on ““Why did God choose me to be a Seer?””

“I am a Seer God Give me knowledge of is kingdom his power and the evil and he sent me to this site to learn now i under stand i and other people were Picted or chosen we have knowledge we have proof God is all round you he sent me to you all he sends love and healing I am proof I can take you to water but I cant make you drink it you after do that.AMEN”

It’s the sort of thing self-proclaimed prophets and seers really need to do to legitimise themselves: make testable short-term predictions which are at least reasonably difficult to guess, and let them come true. If Peter here were to correctly pick the winner of the 2010 Super Bowl, Rose Bowl, World Series, NBA championship and World Cup before December 31 this year, by this time next year he’d have a lot of believers.

I see your point, Anti, but I have other things to consider with this kind of question.

– As soon as I assume X, I essentially give others free rein to assert X, or at least ignore that I’ve merely assumed X temporarily. I maintain that theology is an excellent tool for conversion if you can get unbelievers to participate for any length of time, as it’s easier to take God’s existence as read to get theology to make sense.

– Peter’s X is his whole A to Z: that his personal God exists. Any answer I might give to Peter’s actual question in the body would be a variant of, “Because He (exists, and)…” and then I would be playing his game. Has he really asked me a question at all, or did he just stick a question mark in there so that he could preach?

– The “X-Y-Z-consequences of Z” sequence is the basis of Pascal’s Wager. You’re right that just because X isn’t necessarily true doesn’t mean we’ll never be faced with Z. If you stop there, however, you may forget that X is in fact only X1 out of X1, X2, X3…X497, etc. Other gods, that is. Starting with a simple yes-no on X keeps people from contemplating the consequences of Z2 for believers in X1.

– I have tried laying out constraints for God’s motives in the past. I’ve discovered what in retrospect is obvious: you cannot constrain an omnipotent being, even a hypothetical one, as long as its believers have imaginations. At most they will claim that we humans aren’t meant to understand God’s motives, and/or that God is not beholden to human logic or even any logic. Such claims are an implicit admission that they don’t understand God’s apparent behaviour themselves, but it preserves their belief nicely. Such discussions ultimately go nowhere.

I do try not to think like a machine, but I also try to look ahead. I’ve laid down the generic challenge to charlatans and believers in prophecies: rule out alternative explanations, or make new short-term predictions. Outside of the prophecy thing, I just try to keep to the big issues. If you think an edge case or a particular piece of context would be useful, then by all means comment it in.

Most questions have a top down (conservation of energy) and a bottom up (F = ma) route for finding a solution. I can add up the individual weights of rocks I’m studying or I can throw them all there and weigh the total.

Therefore saying it’s not much use discussing his motives is a bit disingenuous since you could layout the constraints on what those motives could be at least. And that would actually be useful because if we were to assume a God who doesn’t bend to whims then the purposes would be limited to certain categories. That discussion would then reduce the types of claims self proclaimed prophets could actually make.

So no it isn’t useless at all and would actually serve a purpose you would be interested in, deterring charlatans and schemers from approaching believers and others around you.

This is what drives people up the walls about trigger fingered domino thinking. If I don’t have X, I don’t have to bother with Y which means I don’t have to bother with Z and that means I don’t have to pay attention consequences beyond Z and so on.

This bulldozer approach swings far and wide missing a ton of side effects, edge cases, and a whole lot of context. You just sound arrogant when you do that. I don’t mean that personally, but it just comes out that way. Stop thinking like Skynet. 🙂

“- I have tried laying out constraints for God’s motives in the past. I’ve discovered what in retrospect is obvious: you cannot constrain an omnipotent being, even a hypothetical one, as long as its believers have imaginations.”

No quarrel there. I would say though, good is full of paradoxes and evil is full of contradictions. The key is a choice to do something that violates basic rules versus doing as best we can.

” At most they will claim that we humans aren’t meant to understand God’s motives, ”

Absolute bull on their part. As a Christian I sure as Hell better know how my neighbor needs me and what El Jefe would have me do to accomplish it.

“and/or that God is not beholden to human logic or even any logic.”

*cringe*

“Such claims are an implicit admission that they don’t understand God’s apparent behaviour”

Worse, they are a cover story for all the other things they try to excuse themselves for in His name.

“themselves, but it preserves their belief nicely. ”

Preserves? More like perverts.

“Such discussions ultimately go nowhere.”

Not true. They go directly to ego. But I suppose that’s a kind of nowhere.

I’d like to make a distinction which I think you haven’t. God’s orders according to the Bible are simple enough to understand. It’s his motives which are difficult. The Ten Commandments are straightforward, but who’s to say why God broke them himself when he ordered and personally carried out genocides in the Old Testament? It’s His supposed behaviour people have to excuse, not just their own. Otherwise He makes a poor role model in terms of ethics.

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